Latin School of Chicago

According to Brian Greenblatt '13, one of the engineers on Latin's 2-year-old robotics team, success when going up against more experienced teams that are part of bigger programs at larger high schools lies in keeping it simple. "Our goal for the year was for our robot to be as efficient as possible," said Brian, who will be majoring in mechanical engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology this fall. The high school robotics challenge for 2012-13 was to build a machine that would be able to remove rings from pegs and place Started in the fall of 2011, robotics grew out of Latin's very successful Middle School Olympiad team and filled a void in extracurricular options for high school students with an interest in science. Adviser Josh Phipps explains that the club is student-driven and challenges members to design, build, program and problem-solve – all while working cooperatively and thinking creatively. Sarah Huston, who helped program Latin's robot, gives credit for the team's strong performance to its willingness to learn from mistakes and not be intimidated by what bigger programs are bringing to the table. "You can tell which schools have huge clubs," said Sarah, who plans to study physics at The College of Wooster in the fall. "They "You can tell which schools have huge clubs. They set up these amazing displays. But we learned from experience that sometimes it all comes down to preparation." them on other pegs. "Initially we built a robot with a very long arm so that it would reach the highest pegs, which carried the most points. But in the end we got rid of it and decided to focus on the pegs on the bottom row but try to do that as quickly and consistently as possible," he said. The strategy worked better than Brian and teammates Pirapat Deepipat '13, Nathan Goldberg '14, Sarah Huston '13, Rahul Kumar '16, Brian Lorenz '15, Matt Lucas '13 and Indigo Ruiz '14 could have imagined. Though Latin did not have the most sophisticated or attractive robot, the team, which calls itself Animatores Romani, came in first at the regional First Tech Challenge at Whitney Young Magnet High School in November. The win qualified the team for the First Tech Challenge state tournament at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where Latin finished in the top 10. set up these amazing displays. But we learned from experience that sometimes it all comes down to preparation." In 2011, the team had spent much time refining the design of their robot, but did not test it out until the night before. "It turned out we had programmed all the controls backwards." she said. "This year we knew what we were doing," she said. "We spent a lot of hours testing and practicing. We wanted to make sure that what we built was practical and reliable" – a recipe for success that has allowed Latin to make its mark in the competitive world of high school robotics. n LATI N SCHOOL OF CHI CA GO 39

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